Both a four-door, front-engined GT car and a third mid-engined supercar remain under consideration to become Lamborghini’s fourth model line, according to company boss Stefano Domenicali, but neither is likely to enter production until the middle of the next decade.
As such, Domenicali told Autocar at the Goodwood Festival of Speed that the Italian firm won’t take the decision about which to commit to until later, after more market research is done.
Reports have lately circulated that the company’s executives are split over whether its fourth model should be a front-engined GT car in the mould of the 2008 Estoque concept, or a third mid-engined model whose volume might allow Lamborghini to invest in its own all-new, carbonfibre-rich platform to use under future replacements for the Huracán and Aventador as well. The latter option has gathered support after Audi’s reported decision to kill the R8 supercar, which shares the current Huracán’s platform, in 2020.
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But Domenicali’s view is that, considering the transformative effect that the Lamborghini Urus super-SUV is about to have on Lamborghini, now is not the time to be aggressively expansive. “We have doubled our volumes over the last five years,” he told Autocar. “It’s a great time for us - and this is without the effect of Urus, which we have only just started to deliver to customers. It shows that the choices we take in terms of strategy and growth are the right ones, and we are very pleased for that.
“At the end of next year, we can be really close to 8000 units of annual volume. And we should not underestimate what that means for a company that was so small not so many years ago. We have to pause to understand who we will be. In this case, we are not worried about the product too much; we need to be focused on our business, and the change it’s going through. We are not any more in a garage; we are playing a different game, and we need a new mentality as a company.”
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“We need stability next,” Domenicali continued. “There is a saying in Italy that if you take a step that’s longer than your leg, you’re sure to fall. We don’t have to be too hungry; we should keep our feet on the ground, and not think too short-term.”
Domenicali confirmed that work has been done to propose certain models to broaden Lamborghini’s showroom range – but that none of them would figure as production cars for some time. “It is good to plan for the future,” he said, “but on the other hand we need to understand that we’re about to double the dimensions of our company. You cannot triple it in two years.”
“When the time is right, we have several ideas as to what might be the model to add, for sure. But this is about making the right decision at the right time – and we can’t make it now. As Urus shows us, we need to be what the customer wants; it takes time to know, you can’t just smell it in the air. So I don’t see a fourth model coming before 2024 or 2025.”
Domenicali also confirmed that, while work is already under way on hybridised replacements for both the Aventador and Huracán, neither will appear for at least two years.
